Tuesday, April 29, 2008

The Bag Lady

My mom would drive my dad to the train station when he worked downtown. My sister and I were often fascinated by the characters at the train station. One such lady always rode her bicycle and carried a bag of bags. She was affectionately named the bad lady by us and I'm sure many others who saw her around town. I remember my sister at no more than 3 or 4 claiming that she wanted to be the bag lady when she grew up. Today, my eco-friendly little sis wouldn't step foot in her house with a bag of plastic bags. She was the first in the family to start using the cloth bags at the grocery store and routinely turns down the use of a bag when carrying the items will surely do.

Since we now have a hybrid and we recently celebrated earth day, I decided to go bagless this weekend. I haven't made the effort to purchase the grocery store bags but I was able to make grocery and household purchases at meijer, walmart, target, linens n things, and lowes without a single bag. I have purchased vinyl cube baskets for the trunk so no worries of spillage.

I know that this is not a major breakthrough for many folks - but it was suprising to me how little effort it took on my part and how much it threw off the store clerks. I know my sis and bro-in-law get similar reactions when they say "no thanks - we brought our own". JC Penney went as far as saying that the bag would ensure that Dr. T was not wrongly accused of theft. I guess the receipt wasn't quite enough evidence of a legitimate purchase.

I was planning on posting some pics of the house since things are really coming together. It will have to wait a little while longer as I don't want to spoil it for those that are coming for the big day bday/open house bash.

3 comments:

Sandy said...

Good for you! I have quite a few of my own that I use (and my husband hates)...

Teach said...

Yay....it's so nice to see you are turning green. I make fun of Tony, but I am definitely a dork:)

Kate said...

I started using the cloth bags shortly after we started daily grocery shopping. It really does throw the clerks! I don't know if you've seen them, but Jewel has some great insulated bags for cold/frozen stuff. The Dominick's lady said, "We should have those!"